Post by jbrown on Feb 10, 2012 9:23:45 GMT -6
The following is a message from Jason Sanders:
Team, last night's Urban ride was seemingly uneventful. Seemed like a pretty good pace. The first hill in Spring Lake had me calling for my mommy. Barrow got dropped several times. However, as we crossed Kings on Fairfield, I was sitting back talking with Pmarr and noticed a bunch of us at the front at least 4-5 wide with 2 cars waiting to get around us. First of all, this is a stretch of Fairfield where it's essentially 1 1/2 lanes wide and we took up the entire lane. I turned to Pmarr and said this is some of the reason why we have trouble with a lot of motorists. Sooooo, today I get an email from a LaS'port and Sunrise member. One of those cars trying to get around us was a client of his. Needless to say, this client immediately called him and started ranting about the experience. The bad thing is, this client is an endurance athlete. He doesn't ride, but he's been a supporter of cyclists......until last night. He said that we arrogantly took up the entire over-sized lane. Sitting back watching it from my point of view, it looked like the people up front just weren't thinking about what they were doing, but I could easily see how it could come across as arrogance to a non-cyclist. The thing that doesn't make any sense.....well one of the things that doesn't make any sense to me is at this point in the ride we've all sat up and pretty much cruise in to the parking lot. But when we're really "racing" during the Urban ride down Clyde Fant, we look under control and usually single file the entire stretch. So why when we're sitting up, do we feel the need to look out of control and scatter across a huge lane??
The main thing that's not making sense to me, is that we just had 3 cyclists get hit by cars; any of them could've easily been killed. Almost immediately, we started rallying the troops. We got on the news, started screaming "3 Feet Please" and probably got into a few arguments at work and on Facebook, because "we have our rights to the roads". And we do have our rights. BUT we don't appear to be focused on our responsibility in this matter. We can educate Johnny Motorist all day long (and we need to). They need to know that we have a right by state law to be on the roads. They need to know that we're out there. They need to know the areas that are highly populated by cyclists. BUT we have to be educated too!! Why isn't there more talk about this on the egroup? On Facebook? Or heaven forbid we bring it up and be mindful of it on an actual ride??? While we're talking about "our rights", why aren't we talking about ways to keep us safer on rides? And surely we wouldn't discuss ways that we can be more considerate to motorists??? Can you see how we might even come across as a little hypocritical?? We HAVE to do our part too. We can't just scream about our rights and educate everyone else. MAYBE we could be talking about things like wearing clothes that make us more visible, blinking lights on our rear, roads that just aren't a good idea to ride on anymore because of traffic, not absolutely abusing the space on the roads we're given. And I'm not even going to mention how out of control Worlds can get especially on Linwood.
Now last night there seemed to be more caution at stop signs. Everyone stopped at red lights. And there was a lot more "clear", "car left", "car back". But we need to do a better job of policing ourselves. And we if the individual can't police themselves, maybe we can start policing each other??? Or MAYBE, now that we've called so much attention to ourselves, we can keep riding reckless especially in the middle of town, and the police will start policing us. It's pretty elementary....if we want respect from someone, we have to EARN IT.
After Tim, Paul and Brent were hit, we were quick to stand up for "our rights" and assure everyone that Tim, Paul and Brent were doing nothing wrong......they were absolutely right. (And they absolutely were). But if, let's say Tim, were killed in his accident; he can be right all day every day......but he's still dead! If one of us doesn't come back home alive from a ride, the LAST thing our families will be concerned about is how right we were!
Team, last night's Urban ride was seemingly uneventful. Seemed like a pretty good pace. The first hill in Spring Lake had me calling for my mommy. Barrow got dropped several times. However, as we crossed Kings on Fairfield, I was sitting back talking with Pmarr and noticed a bunch of us at the front at least 4-5 wide with 2 cars waiting to get around us. First of all, this is a stretch of Fairfield where it's essentially 1 1/2 lanes wide and we took up the entire lane. I turned to Pmarr and said this is some of the reason why we have trouble with a lot of motorists. Sooooo, today I get an email from a LaS'port and Sunrise member. One of those cars trying to get around us was a client of his. Needless to say, this client immediately called him and started ranting about the experience. The bad thing is, this client is an endurance athlete. He doesn't ride, but he's been a supporter of cyclists......until last night. He said that we arrogantly took up the entire over-sized lane. Sitting back watching it from my point of view, it looked like the people up front just weren't thinking about what they were doing, but I could easily see how it could come across as arrogance to a non-cyclist. The thing that doesn't make any sense.....well one of the things that doesn't make any sense to me is at this point in the ride we've all sat up and pretty much cruise in to the parking lot. But when we're really "racing" during the Urban ride down Clyde Fant, we look under control and usually single file the entire stretch. So why when we're sitting up, do we feel the need to look out of control and scatter across a huge lane??
The main thing that's not making sense to me, is that we just had 3 cyclists get hit by cars; any of them could've easily been killed. Almost immediately, we started rallying the troops. We got on the news, started screaming "3 Feet Please" and probably got into a few arguments at work and on Facebook, because "we have our rights to the roads". And we do have our rights. BUT we don't appear to be focused on our responsibility in this matter. We can educate Johnny Motorist all day long (and we need to). They need to know that we have a right by state law to be on the roads. They need to know that we're out there. They need to know the areas that are highly populated by cyclists. BUT we have to be educated too!! Why isn't there more talk about this on the egroup? On Facebook? Or heaven forbid we bring it up and be mindful of it on an actual ride??? While we're talking about "our rights", why aren't we talking about ways to keep us safer on rides? And surely we wouldn't discuss ways that we can be more considerate to motorists??? Can you see how we might even come across as a little hypocritical?? We HAVE to do our part too. We can't just scream about our rights and educate everyone else. MAYBE we could be talking about things like wearing clothes that make us more visible, blinking lights on our rear, roads that just aren't a good idea to ride on anymore because of traffic, not absolutely abusing the space on the roads we're given. And I'm not even going to mention how out of control Worlds can get especially on Linwood.
Now last night there seemed to be more caution at stop signs. Everyone stopped at red lights. And there was a lot more "clear", "car left", "car back". But we need to do a better job of policing ourselves. And we if the individual can't police themselves, maybe we can start policing each other??? Or MAYBE, now that we've called so much attention to ourselves, we can keep riding reckless especially in the middle of town, and the police will start policing us. It's pretty elementary....if we want respect from someone, we have to EARN IT.
After Tim, Paul and Brent were hit, we were quick to stand up for "our rights" and assure everyone that Tim, Paul and Brent were doing nothing wrong......they were absolutely right. (And they absolutely were). But if, let's say Tim, were killed in his accident; he can be right all day every day......but he's still dead! If one of us doesn't come back home alive from a ride, the LAST thing our families will be concerned about is how right we were!